All three phases deserve blame in the Minnesota Vikings’ back-breaking 31-28 loss to the Dallas Cowboys. The brunt, though, will go to the defense, which reverted back to its early-2020 form and allowed two fourth quarter touchdown drives. Pass-rush was paltry, defensive backs made silly mistakes, and the unit allowed 24 points off four red zone trips.
It was unreasonable, though, to expect that Minnesota’s ramshackle defense was going to play over its head for the remainder of the season after three respectable showings during Minnesota’s three-game winning streak. At some point, the defense’s inexperience would show up once again, and the Vikings offense would need to bail them out.
“We scored enough points to win,” head coach Mike Zimmer said after the game, “but we didn’t play well enough at the end.”
That sums it up accurately. Minnesota’s offense had a stretch of brilliance Sunday that gave the defense plenty of chances to right the ship. Kirk Cousins, Adam Thielen and Co. erased a nine-point deficit during a sequence of three-straight touchdown drives — but you also shouldn’t ignore the slow start before that or the two unproductive drives to end the game. More is expected of an offense — both out of the gate and in crunch time — when three of the best offensive players in the league are part of the equation.
This is not a Cousins hit piece. Prior to the Vikings’ final two drives, the quarterback had a perfect passer rating and only three incompletions, and his accuracy on downfield shots to both Justin Jefferson and Thielen was pinpoint. Knock him for a fumble in the first quarter, though, after a hard hit by Donovan Wilson that gifted the Cowboys six points. And by all means watch the game film critically to see if he missed any open receivers on the final two possessions where the Vikings managed just one first down. Cousins may have had some Thielen tunnel vision as he targeted the red-hot receiver three times with no success when Thielen was closely covered.
Cousins has shed a handful of narratives over the last couple of years, including last Monday when he finally won on Monday Night Football. While Cousins earned mountains of equity with his overtime playoff win last January, since joining the Vikings he has only one regular season game-tying drive in the final four minutes of regulation and zero game-winning drives.
The quarterback said he was “sick to his stomach” after the loss, Minnesota’s third defeat by a field goal or less this season. The end resembled the Vikings’ one-point loss to Tennessee Titans in Week 3 when the offense also failed twice late in the fourth quarter, including a fruitless four-and-out on their final possession. On their final seven plays from scrimmage Sunday, Minnesota gained just four yards and Cousins went 1-for-6 on an afternoon when the offense otherwise gained a solid 7.0 yards per play. One of those incompletions came at the hands of Jefferson, who had a likely catch and run for a first down on a crossing route but dropped an easy reception over the middle.
“Just individual plays,” Cousins said, diagnosing what happened down the stretch. “We had one where they kind of loaded us up in zone and threw incomplete. Then on third down, worked Adam on that out route; it was tight coverage, didn’t hit it. The two-minute, same thing. Got the completion on first down, second down – didn’t get it. Third down, didn’t get the out route to Adam there either. Fourth down, played off schedule and didn’t get that either, so it was just kind of a couple different plays.”
The Vikings left little margin for error in the second half because of their disjointed first half that, for the second week in a row produced two turnovers and limited the Vikings to just seven first-half points. For a second straight week, they had a golden opportunity to score before halftime, but an untimely turnover turned into three points the other way. Last week it was Thielen dropping the ball into Khalil Mack‘s hands; Sunday it was Dalvin Cook losing the handle after another hard hit from Wilson. The result: At least a six-point swing before halftime.
Uncharacteristic fumbles, ill-timed drops and, don’t forget, four offensive penalties — these aren’t errors made because of a superior defensive scheme or ineffective play calls. The Vikings offense has been rolling for much of the last month, yet self-inflicted wounds are getting in the way. Against the Chicago Bears in Week 10, the Vikings were able to overcome those mistakes, but not against the Cowboys.
“We just had turnovers,” Cook said. “We never got on schedule in the first half. The first half was just like, it was all a blur. Like we couldn’t get on schedule to get going to where we wanted to go.”
One scoring drive out of five in the first half isn’t going to get the job done against a defense that was ranked bottom three against the run coming into the game. Imagine that the Vikings flip-flopped their first half with their second half, that they turned it over twice down the stretch and only scored once after halftime. Would you be satisfied? Probably not. While the slow start occurred during the less consequential part of the game, it still mattered, and the Vikings dug a hole because of it. Zimmer said he thought the team was energized before the game, but it didn’t equate. Energy, after all, doesn’t always translate to execution.
“I really felt like we were going to win the ballgame throughout the whole course of the game, even as bad as we started off offensively,” Zimmer said, “because we were clicking again in the second half offensively.”
But the offense put itself, and the defense, in positions where it had to be perfect in the second half, and that’s a big ask.
Rip the defense for all the obvious reasons, but they’re not the ones with the highly-paid quarterback, a sensational rookie and myriad veterans that shouldn’t be shooting themselves in the foot.
